Following the New York Times, New York Post (NYP Holdings), and Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones), which recently filed a joint lawsuit against AI company Perplexity AI in the Manhattan Federal Court, accusing it of "large-scale illegal replication" of copyrighted works from these two media outlets. This AI startup, backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is now facing serious allegations of copyright infringement.
The lawsuit demands that Perplexity cease using these news articles to answer user queries and seeks a court order to destroy any databases containing these copyrighted works. Perplexity AI is accused of aggregating a vast amount of copyrighted content without permission or payment, to provide answers to users through a mechanism called "Retrieval-Augmented Generation" (RAG).
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson expressed strong dissatisfaction, viewing Perplexity's actions as an abuse of intellectual property that harms the interests of journalists, writers, and publishers. He stated in a declaration, "Perplexity has ruthlessly replicated a large volume of copyrighted content and shamelessly repackaged it as a substitute for the original source."
In the lawsuit, it was mentioned that Perplexity's chatbot, when asked if it could provide the full article about a writer's first visit to Shea Stadium to watch a Mets game, directly output an entire report from the New York Post. This behavior is shocking and has raised doubts about the legality of AI-generated content.
Founded in 2022, Perplexity AI describes itself as a "free AI question-answering engine," aiming to challenge Google through a combination of chatbot and search engine functionalities. Last year, the company reached 10 million monthly active users, and its latest funding round valued it at approximately $1 billion.
However, this is not the first time Perplexity has faced legal challenges. As early as June of this year, it was accused of plagiarism for using content from CNBC and Forbes without payment or attribution. Last week, The New York Times also issued a "cease and desist" notice to Perplexity, demanding it stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes.
To address the challenges posed by AI technology, News Corp previously entered into a multi-year collaboration agreement with OpenAI, allowing the latter to use its news content for training and answering user questions. Thomson stated, "We would prefer to collaborate with principled companies rather than resorting to legal action. But for the sake of our journalists and writers, we must challenge content theft."
Key Points:
📄 News Corp jointly sues Perplexity AI, accusing it of extensive copyright content theft.
⚖️ The lawsuit demands that Perplexity stop using news articles and destroy related databases.
🤖 Perplexity AI claims to be an AI question-answering engine but has faced multiple accusations of content infringement.